Home-made tomato puree & mayonnaise

“Cooking is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your diet. What matters most is not any particular nutrient, or even any particular food: it’s the act of cooking itself. People who cook eat a healthier diet without giving it a thought. It’s the collapse of home cooking that led directly to the obesity epidemic.” - Michael Pollan, extract from The New York Times.

I completely have to agree with Pollan that most people love junk food like french fries because this otherwise messy & tough snack to make at home is today, a large scale mechanized product that you can grab out of your freezer & eat them thrice a day if you wish! 

Same goes for ready-to-use products like ginger-garlic paste, tomato purée & mayonnaise.  In my opinion great flavours lie in natural products the essence of which cannot be found in prepared products.  A little planning & efficient time management is all it takes to get the base ingredients right.  

It isn't time consuming at all to make the purée & mayo.  Regardless of how laborious & time-consuming you think it is to make them, I suggest you give it a shot.  Try making tomato purée & mayonnaise with the instructions given below & use them to make 2 dishes that I prescribe.  See the difference of mechanized versus home-made ingredients for yourself!  

How to make tomato purée 

Take 6 large ripe tomatoes.  Drop them into boiling water for a minute & take them out.  One slit on the tomato & the peel comes off easily.  Now cut the tomatoes into half, pull out the seeds & cut the green tip of the tomato.  Discard seeds & blend the pulp to get a smooth puree.  

Some suggest blending the seeds & then straining the puree.  There have been reports that the seeds of hybrid tomatoes cause gall stones & are carcinogenic.  Si I prefer them without the seeds.  As for texture, the purée, in my opinion is a lot smoother when you chuck the seeds out!

Now for the challenge, try making

 Tomato-almond-pesto

Puree of 6 tomatoes

Handful of fresh basil leaves

1 cup of almond paste

(blanch almonds : drop them in boiling water for a minute, remove skin & blend with little water to make a smooth paste)

2-3 cloves of garlic chopped

60ml olive oil

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Any pasta of your choice

In a sauce pan heat 60ml olive oil.  Saute garlic until they turn brown, pour in the purée& bring to a boil.  Add the almond paste.  Roughly chop basil leaves & drop them in the sauce.  Let this simmer for 4-5mins.  Pour this over any paste of your choice & sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  You will see a world of difference when you add home-made puree to this!

How to make mayonnaise

Read instructions entirely before you begin

3 egg yolks

500 ml vegetable oil

3 teaspoons vinegar

2 teaspoons lemon juice (1tsp if using indian lime)

salt & pepper to taste

Beat egg yolks thoroughly for 2mins.  Add 2 teaspoons of vinegar & beat for 30secs.  Add salt & pepper & beat for another minute.  Gradually add vegetable oil & continue to whisk vigorously.  Adding more oil could break the mayonnaise so ensure the process is very gradual.  When it thickens too much add 1 teaspoon of vinegar.  

Now for the challenge, try making 

La salade macedoine

2 carrots

200g beans (haricots)

1 small turnip

200g fresh green peas (If not using fresh baby peas, boil them separately & add at the end)

1 stalk of celery

1 cup of mayonnaise

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

salt & pepper to taste.

Wash, peel & chop carrots, beans, celery & turnips in 1cm cubes.  Bring about a litre of salted water to boil in a casserole & add carrots, turnip and green peas.  After 4mins add celery & beans & boil for 7-8mins.  Drain the vegetables & pass some cold water through them. Set aside.  In a salad bowl, mix dijon mustard to the mayonnaise & add the vegetables.  Season with salt & pepper.  You can add orange juice or honey or any other spice of your choice to give it some extra tang.

When cooking for family, we take extra care to chose the right ingredients.  We live in an age where food adulteration & toxins have become a part & parcel of daily living.  The least we can do is cut down on this dependency of industrialized products for our basic necessities.  Of course they may not seem practical while cooking for a large group of people but you can try to incorporate while cooking for your family.  

Excess mayonnaise can be used to prepare a nice sandwich the next morning or as an accompaniment to an evening snack.  Tomato puree can be reused in soups or as substitutes for tomatoes in your main course.